


Ruins of Innsmouth

by Mourningstar (skinsuit)



Category: Innsmouth - Fandom, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works, Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1784311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinsuit/pseuds/Mourningstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened to the people of Innsmouth after devil's reef was destroyed.  What was their side of the story, anyhow?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruins of Innsmouth

_Night by the river and she feels so alone. Devil’s reef has been destroyed for ages. But unbeknownst to the world at large her race goes on. Here where there is no sea, no deep mysteries, no salt water to cleanse her tears and wipe away her sorrow. She stands by the river bank, in the park at midnight. Her people’s blood is thinning as the prettiest the most normal looking marry little town is killing them. they need the sea, they need Mother Hydra and father dagon. Oh they were painted black by that bigoted New Englander. He never knew the strength they had, the love, the truth hey had seen. And now that truth is rotting and gone. And the only body of water for miles around is this shallow, muddy river. At a quarter passed one she strips herself of her garments and lowers herself into the river. She can breath easy here. It’s a trick to tell her body not to breath. Not to react. She lets the water engulf her and sink her to the bottom of the muddy river. And eventually it kills even her._  
" _They kept us in camps," Said Grandfather. “Like the Japanese on the west coast or the Jews in Europe."_  
 _Nobody listens to him anymore. Mother is busy making chowder._

 _Father has just gotten off work, he works for the state, the gall of it. But Father is hardly one of them just a trace of webbing between his fingers and toes. The boys are playing some video game, their dark hair and wide staring eyes don’t really get much attention from their classmates. No one listens to Grandfather, he tells the story over and over again. Bettina is doing her homework, a thick black velvet choker covering her gill slits. She looks up. Her green eyes meeting Grandfather’s grey ones._  
 _"Tell me again about the camps." She said._  
 _"You’ll listen this time?" Grandfather said._  
 _"Yes I will," Bettina said._  
 _"After Devil’s reef, the ones that weren’t thrown in prison were shipped up north," Grandfather said. “They packed us in cattle cars like animals. I was just twelve."_  
All they could hear was the sound of the train, all they could see was the dimness, their eyes better then a humans could make out the familiar  faces of family and neighbors. At the beginning many of them had been keening, moaning, but a guard came in and fired away with a gun into the crowded cattle car. That stopped them. The wounded bleed and the dying die in silence. A woman clutches her crying bloody infant to her breast to muffle it. Soon there is silence. They are getting further and further away from the only home they ever knew.  
_"And when we got out we we’re in the middle of nowhere," Grandfather said. “Old army barracks, converted to huts and such. Not a drop of water anywhere. My mother was so torn up about that. There were dogs big nasty things, and guards and barbed wire like a prison. Each family got a hut, we were No. 23."_  
They sleep uneasily that night. There is weeping from other huts and a cold wind that blows in from somewhere and gets between the cracks of the makeshift houses and through the thin blankets. They ball up tighter the men cling to their wives and wives cling to their little children.  
In the morning they are called out, those that don’t come are dragged out. They are taken to be processed. Pictures taken, names taken, finger prints.. The men, the women and children are separated. Each is given a uniform surplus from the last war, simple khaki that’s sometimes to tight or to baggy. They are ordered to change. Of course they do discarding their old clothes, their old lives. Next they are marched to the mess hall. Where everyone is doled out bowl of a thin grey gruel. It’s what they will be fed everyday they are here.  
_"They made us work, not doing anything useful just something to tire us out, make us miserable. Breaking rocks that sort of thing, all chained together, I was old enough so I worked too." Grandfather said. “I don’t know what the women did, whatever it was it broke down Ma something awful, her fingers would be all bloody. At night we’d eat and just collapse into bed. And I noticed that the bowl of mush we got was getting smaller and smaller. There was this doctor there in a white coat, with wire rim glasses and the coldest look about him. He’d sometimes watch us work…"_  
The doctor looked over the inmates sometimes the men and older boys. Sometimes the women and young children. He spoke to the guards, and they’d select someone. Sometimes a normal looking, sometimes deformed. They’d march them off to a central building and never return. They could hear screams and prayers coming from within. The prayers were never answered. Their God was too far away. It was better to ignore the screams in this cold, dry miserable place. Better to just survive.  
_"Did I tell you about my older sister Basemath?" Grandfather said._  
 _"The one who died?" Bettina asked._  
 _Grandfather looks around making sure no one is paying attention. They aren’t._  
 _He looks at his granddaughter. “You’re old enough. She hung herself. You know why? They caught her after curfew and the guards… they took their turns with her. We could hear her. But we couldn’t do nothing. My Dad he wanted oh, he swore to the old gods, he’d get revenge. But Ma, stopped him. Said we’d suffered enough. She stumbled back, Ma, cleaned her up. Poor thing sobbing her eyes out, dress all torn up and bloody. Then she sort of went quiet and limp for days. One day she took off early from whatever they had the women doing. And they found her dangling with a rope round her neck hung up in a tree. I’ve heard that doesn’t kill you right away. They took her body. burned it,like trash. That’s all we were to them trash "_  
_Bettina looks horrified, her pencil dropping from her math homework._  
The numbers drop as the food becomes less. The ones who can’t survive die like flies. Disease takes a share of them so does starvation. One day they come for the children, not all of them. The young ones, the human looking ones. And they take them away.  
_"They took us to this school," Grandfather said. “Re-education they called it. If you spoke the old language they’d beat you, if you tried to pray to the wrong god they beat you. They tried to destroy everything that made us what we are. But one thing good did come out it. I met your grandmother there. Never wold have talked to her before. But they’d hurt her and it went deep inside her. Never could fix it."_  
 _When they drag the river they find her corpse. An old woman, The coroner notes some unusual features about the body. The family denies the request for an autopsy._


End file.
